Valentine Love

Hello Blogger Friends! Thanks for taking the time to stop and visit with The Charmed Life Blog this first Monday in February. Hope you had a good weekend and had some crafty time. 

Friday night I had a few of my girlfriends over for a Galentine party. I did this last year and intend to make it an annual tradition. We started off the evening with appetizers and wine. Then I had them all make a Valentine card for their Hubby's. 

None of them are stampers so I used a Stampin' Up Valentine kit to help them out. I kept them to the kit design which is fairly easy and they all did well. I gave them enamel dots and sequins to personalize the card. They all did something just a bit different with the embellishments. 

Then we moved onto to the soup and salad course. It was such a really cold night that  I thought soup would be something good to serve. It was an apple butternut squash cream based soup. There are plenty of other veggies that go into it for a delicious taste. It went over very well. 

For dessert, I served French macarons and brownie coffee ice cream sandwiches. Needless to say they all loved dessert.

I had everyone brings a small gift. I gave numbers to each gift and then they picked a number to select the corresponding gift. Interesting that no one picked their own number.  I sent each guest home with a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers. All in all,
the evening went very well, and everyone sent me texts the next morning thanking me for a fun evening. 

Now onto my card for today. This one I created for the color challenge #933 on Splitcoaststampers. We were to use coastal cabana, poppy parade and crumb cake. 

I went with a Valentine design for my card. I had this idea for the truck carrying lots of hearts.

The truck die is one from the CottageCutz Christmas collection - Sweet Treats Truck. I just eliminated Santa and his treats and added hearts. I cut the truck in poppy parade and added the hubcaps in crumb cake. Stamped the special delivery phrase in black ink.It's an older stamp from Verve. 

Used acetate for the windshield and headlight but it didn't show up very well in the photo. In retrospect I maybe should have shaded it with gray ink or used vellum?

I cut the Valentine phrase in poppy parade and stamped the love word in black ink. The larger love word is a Penny Black stamp and the smaller love word is a Lawn Fawn stamp. 

Well that's my card for today. So until next time........God bless. 

Card details: 

Stamps: words sweet (Penny Black), practically perfect (Verve), love letters (Lawn Fawn)

Paper: coastal cabana, basic white, poppy parade, black, smoky slate, crumb cake, playing with patterns dsp (Stampin' Up)

Paper Size: A2

Ink: poppy parade (Stampin' Up), tuxedo black (Memento)

Accessories: sweet treats truck, happy valentine's day phrase dies (CottageCutz),

I am also entering: 

1.  Crafting Happiness has a Love challenge. 

2.  Cupcake Inspiration #562 is a Valentine challenge. 

3.  Allsorts challenge is anything goes with optional theme of love. 

4.  Sweet Stampin' has a love challenge. 

5.  Cut it Up challenge is love and include a die cut.